


hey kiddo

by weasleysking



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Irondad, Lots of Crying, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 05:13:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20384233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleysking/pseuds/weasleysking
Summary: pepper is clearing out tony's things when she finds a stack of letters, one for each person important to tony, that he wrote in case of his untimely death when the team decided to try and reverse the snap. she knows that giving peter his will be the hardest. he's just a kid, after all.





	hey kiddo

“It was last week when I found it,” Pepper said softly, handing Peter an envelope as they sat down on the couch in her lounge together with Steve. Morgan sat at the table doing a puzzle which Peter had promised to help with soon. Everytime she got a piece she looked up at him and waved.  
Peter gulped in cold air.  
“I’d finally decided to start clearing out his stuff with Rhodey and Happy, and a pile of these were in his bedside table drawer. There was one for all of the… the team. And myself and Morgan, and a few others.”  
Peter looked at Steve. “I read mine already,” Steve said, nodding.  
Peter stared at the envelope. It was addressed to Peter, in Tony’s hand writing.  
He looked up at the two adults. “Do you think he knew?” Peter whispered, slightly strangled. Pepper sighed, her lip trembling.  
“I think,” She said softly, her eyes damp, “that he knew the risk. But I don’t think he knew.” Steve nodded.  
Peter looked down at the envelope again, noticing for the first his hands were shaking.  
He looked up at Steve. “Can you read it to me? Please?”  
“Of course I can,” Steve said quietly, taking the envelope and placing Pepper’s hands on Peter’s gently. They grasped hands, and he nodded at Steve.  
Steve opened the envelope, took out the letter, took a deep breath, and began to read. 

“Peter, 

Hey kiddo. If you’re reading this, something happened to me. And I hope for everyone’s sake, I went out for a good cause. I hope I went out for you to have a future.  
If you’re reading this, it also means that we got you back. I hope I got to see you first. I hope I got to give you the hug you needed. 

I’m so sorry kid.  
The moment you clung to me as you turned to dust, I tried so hard to hold on. I tried to hold on harder than I ever have, and I’m so sorry I didn’t hold on tight enough. For the last five years, I have thought about you every day. Hoping if you could feel anything, wherever you were, you were okay. 

I need you to do a few things for me. The first isn’t even something I would have to ask if we were home together, and I’m sure that by the time you get this, you’ve already started to do it. I know you’ll be the best big brother to Morgan I could possibly imagine. For five years, I dreamt of you two meeting. I only wish I could be there to see it. 

I also need you to trust your instincts. It’s on you now, Pete. I can’t believe I’m about to say this to you, and it goes against everything I’ve been painfully trying to teach you, but I want you to ignore people’s instructions if you believe in what you are doing. You have the best intentions and the biggest heart of any hero I know, and I believe you will use those right without me there telling you what to do. 

It’s cruel that I got to spend so much time with everyone else in my life and so little with you. The two years I spent with you lit up my life in ways no one can imagine. You were what made me truly believe I could be a father and take the next step in becoming that. Your little quips and stupid text messages made my day, though I would never have dared give you that satisfaction then. Though I know you cherished our relationship, had I known what was going to happen to us, I would have given you so much more praise, so many more hugs, so much more love. You deserve that, and I hope the others can give you that if I am not there to. 

I”m sorry I didn’t hold on, Peter.  
You bought unlimited light into my life in the time we spent together.  
I love you like a father should love his son.  
I only wish I had been able to say these things to you in person. If we shared any moments together after you came back, I hope whatever I did said this.  
I’m so proud of you, and I will never stop being proud of you or loving you kid. 

Always here,  
Tony (Mr. Stark).”

Peter was sobbing. He was sobbing so heavily he didn’t think he could breathe anymore.  
“I tried- to hold- onto him too- I tried-” Peter sobbed, his voice breaking and taking deep gasping breaths between words.  
“I know, I know,” Pepper was crying too, holding Peter to her chest, “I know honey-”  
Steve folded the letter and put it on the coffee table, and he joined the hug.  
“You meant the world to him kid,” he whispered, and Peter could hear the tears in his voice too. “He knows you did what you could.”  
Peter continued to cry, but calmed a little when a small body made her way into the middle of the hug and onto his lap as the group broke apart.  
“Why is Peter crying?” Morgan asked her mother and Steve, looking at Peter worridley.  
They all smiled slightly, and Peter hugged Morgan tightly.  
“We were just reading something from Daddy,” Pepper said softly, tears falling down her face as she stroked both Morgan and Peter’s hair.  
“Oh, that makes me cry sometimes too,” Morgan said in that blunt but kind way small children spoke. “But colouring in makes me feel better.”  
They all laughed a little, and Steve replied, “why don’t you go get your pens and books and we can all colour in to feel better?”  
Morgan nodded. “Okay, I will just be- a moment-” she struggled to get down off the couch through the tangle of bodies and eventually slid down Steve’s legs to the ground and ran to her room.  
Peter wiped his face and took some deep breaths. Pepper did the same, and Steve rubbed both of their backs.  
“We’re together,” he said. They both nodded, and Peter lay his head in Pepper’s lap.  
“We’re together, And he’s here too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!  
i'm on tumblr too, come cry with me over fiction! @miss-mysticfalls


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